Facilities including outdoors or buried pipes and/or containment structures, such as tanks, reservoirs, containers, etc., are known. This includes pipes and/or containment structures made of metallic or non-metallic materials such as for example steels, concrete, fiber composites, plastics and wood. Such pipes and/or containment structures are intended to conduct or contain various fluids such as hydrocarbons, gases, water, etc., eventually under pressure, and often are exposed to aggressive environments.
With the use, this kind of pipes and/or containment structures become degraded or damaged until having one or more defective sections that need to be repaired or in many cases even must be replaced. In-situ repairing, for example by means of a patch, is only feasible if damages are concentrated in a relatively reduced area of the surface of the pipe and/or containment structure. Replacement of a whole defective section of the pipe and/or containment structure is expensive and the operation service needs to be interrupted for an undesirable long time.
A repair or manufacturing technique by using resin vacuum infusion is known, which comprises in summary applying one or more layers of a self-adhesive fiber sheet onto a surface to be treated, encapsulating with a vacuum bag the one or more layers of the self-adhesive fiber sheet applied onto the surface to be treated, creating by means of a vacuum system a low pressure into a space between the vacuum bag and the surface to be treated to compress the one or more layers of the self-adhesive fiber sheet, and injecting by means of an injection system a curable resin into the space between the vacuum bag and the surface to be treated where the low pressure has been created to impregnate the one or more layers of the self-adhesive fiber sheet with the curable resin. Then, the injection is stopped and the curable resin is let to cure thereby forming a composite laminate. Finally, the vacuum system and the injection system are disconnected and the vacuum bag removed.
Document U.S. Pat. No. 9,579,873 B2 discloses a method and an apparatus for reworking a damaged area of a structure, such as for example an aircraft skin, from one side of the structure using vacuum resin infusion of a dry fiber patch. Entrapped air and excess resin are removed from the patch during the infusion process by inserting a vacuum device into the patch, and forcing the area resin through the vacuum device.
Document CN 106393732 A discloses a yacht manufacturing method which involves paving reinforced fiber material on a yacht mold according to a structure layer, forming a vacuum auxiliary material on an upper surface of the reinforced fiber material in the yacht mold, fixing the auxiliary material with a diversion net and a guide pipe, and forming a vacuum bag film on the auxiliary material. Air pumping process is performed between the yacht mold and the vacuum bag by a vacuum pump which is connected with an exhaust pipe. Resin is injected into a vacuum mold cavity of the yacht mold and a yacht boat body is obtained by removing the yacht mold. The yacht mold is reusable.